[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1207-H1210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SUCCEEDING ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Woodall) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate that, and I 
appreciate you being here with us on a Thursday afternoon.
  I know that you came to Congress with the same optimism that I came 
to Congress with, and that is, if only we work hard enough together, if 
only we commit ourselves with earnestness to one another, we will be 
able to make a difference for folks. I still believe that, and I hope 
you still believe that, too, after your time here.
  I still believe that, if only we work hard enough, we are going to be 
able to serve the American people as we promised we would. But 
occasionally--occasionally--I don't want to vilify the entire fourth 
estate today, Madam Speaker. There is not enough time to go through 
that today. But occasionally, the fourth estate seems to suggest that 
we are failing the American people when, in fact, we are succeeding on 
their behalf, and that is what I want to talk about this afternoon.
  We just came through a difficult budget time, Madam Speaker. We came 
through that not because of any failures of any man or woman in this 
institution. I want to make that clear. This House came together as a 
body back in July of last year and passed every single national 
security appropriations bill that was upon us.

                              {time}  1315

  July of last year--3 months before the end of the fiscal year--this 
body came together and did its job to fund our men and women in 
uniform, fund border security, and fund those incredibly important 
national security items that every single American family cares about.
  The Senate had been unable to get any of those bills passed. That 
brought us to just a week ago, when the President finally signed into 
law a funding bill for the United States Government to cover the 
remainder of fiscal year 2018.
  I mentioned the House passed, in July of last year, all of the 
national security appropriations bills. In September of last year, 
Madam Speaker, the House passed all the rest of the appropriations 
bills. So the entire Federal Government, from the perspective of the 
435 men and women who serve in the House, that work was completed on 
time before the end of the fiscal year.
  But, again, the Senate was unable to take up any appropriations 
bills, for a variety of different reasons--and I am not interested in 
assigning that blame today. I am interested in figuring out what we can 
do about it going forward--took until just a week ago for the Senate to 
sign an appropriations bill, craft a plan, and do what we call raising 
the caps so that we can get a funding agreement that will take us over 
the next 18 months.
  Madam Speaker, you can't see it here, but I have a chart of defense 
spending going back over the last few years. In fact, I started the 
chart the year that I was running for Congress for the very first time. 
It was 2010. I came in in that big class of freshmen. There were 100 of 
us. Imagine that: 100

[[Page H1208]]

out of 435 Members, coming in for the first time, together, in January 
of 2011, and many of us came here with a desire to balance budgets.
  Among the many data points that get shared, Madam Speaker, one was 
shared with me when I was doing C-SPAN's Washington Journal this week. 
The host said: Rob, do you think the era of fiscal conservatism is 
over?
  I thought that was odd. I am thinking: No, I serve in a body full of 
men and women, both sides of the aisle, fiscal conservatives, who want 
to make sure the American taxpayer is getting a dollar's worth of value 
for a dollar's worth of taxes, who want to make sure we are not 
balancing the budget on the backs of our children and grandchildren, 
and who want to make sure we are not mortgaging the future of our 
children and our grandchildren.
  Why would the era of fiscal conservatism be over? Well, the 
suggestion was made it is because we just signed a budget deal, and 
that budget deal raises levels of discretionary spending in this 
country; and if we are raising levels of discretionary spending, 
mustn't that mean that our commitment to fiscal responsibility is over?
  That led me to come to the floor today, Madam Speaker, because what 
you can't see on this chart, but I have displayed here, are two lines. 
One is a red line. Oftentimes, Madam Speaker, folks bring charts to the 
floor that only show you a part of the picture, so the amplitude is 
exaggerated. It looks like things are worse or better than they 
actually are.
  I have grounded my chart at zero. This is zero dollars in spending, 
going all the way up to $1 trillion in spending. The year I got here, 
we were spending about $689 billion a year on defense.
  Well, we got together as a body, Madam Speaker. And, I will remind 
you, Republicans controlled the U.S. House at that time. President 
Obama controlled the White House, Harry Reid controlled the United 
States Senate, and the House was in minority hands, being led by 
Republicans. But we got together, Republicans and Democrats--House, 
Senate, White House--and we crafted a budget plan forward that reduced 
spending.
  Now, the plan was that we were going to reduce spending on both the 
defense side of the ledger and the nondefense side of the ledger, and 
then we were going to come together and deal with those major 
healthcare entitlement programs that are driving the debt far out into 
the future, deal with the trust funds for Medicare and Social Security 
that are underfunded today that cannot sustain the promises that have 
been made to generations today, that we would repair those programs and 
make them solvent long into the future.
  It was a worthwhile goal. It was a goal worthy of this body, men and 
women--Republicans, Democrats, House Members, Senate Members--who came 
together. But what you can see on this chart, Madam Speaker, is the 
black line indicates the path we took of funding national security, 
each year, spending less and less and less.
  Now, mind you, nobody thought this was the right plan for how to fund 
national security. This was designed to be a driver to force folks to 
come together and deal with those larger entitlement programs that 
actually are the drivers of the debt. It didn't work.
  In fact, we had an entire Presidential election cycle that just went 
on 15 months ago, Madam Speaker, where you can't name the candidate who 
ran on either the Republican or the Democratic side of the aisle, who 
made debt and deficits their priority.
  Who was that? Who was that leader running for the White House, the 
last time around, who focused on debt and deficits as their priorities? 
For whatever reason, it slipped from the national stage, probably 
because we had been successfully curbing the needle on spending.
  So, fast forward, to just a week ago, Madam Speaker, where we raised 
defense spending by $100 billion a year. Now, if you calculate where 
the caps were going to go and how the sequester was going to happen, 
you actually turn out to have about a $150 billion increase over where 
folks expected us to be.
  Well, golly, Madam Speaker, even in Washington, D.C., when you raise 
a $550 billion budget to $700 billion, that is an enormous increase. 
That is why I was asked: Is the era of fiscal conservatism over?
  I direct you to this chart, I show you this enormous increase in 
defense spending, and I show you that we are still $100 billion a year 
lower than Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid had anticipated 
before I was elected to Congress in 2010.

  All of this area, between the red line and the black line, Madam 
Speaker, are dollars saved for the American people. Now, those dollars 
came at a price.
  I reference testimony that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former 
General Jim Mattis, gave in the Armed Services Committee--this was just 
a week and 2 days ago--and he said this: ``I cannot overstate the 
impact to our troops' morale from all this uncertainty.''
  He is talking about these continuing resolutions that get passed. 
Again, the House passed its bills back last July, the Senate hasn't 
been able to pass any of its bills, so we were funding the government 
one short-term bill at the time, creating havoc on the American 
military.
  ``I cannot overstate the impact to our troops' morale from all this 
uncertainty. The combination of rapidly changing technology, the 
negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest 
continuous stretch of combat in our Nation's history, and insufficient 
funding have created an overstretched and underresourced military.''
  I don't believe there is a man or woman in this Chamber, Madam 
Speaker, who would disagree with that, ``an overstretched and 
underresourced military,'' or ``the longest continuous stretch of 
combat in our Nation's history.'' This is not an issue that divides 
this Chamber, this is an issue that unites this Chamber, Madam Speaker. 
I am proud that we came together, as a House and a Senate, as 
Republicans and Democrats, to address that failure.
  In fact, I will quote from General Mattis. Just two days after that 
morale quote, after this body had acted, after the Senate had finally 
acted, after the President had put his signature on the bill, General 
Mattis said this: ``I am very confident that what the Congress has now 
done and the President is going to allocate to us in the budget is what 
we need to bring us back to a position of primacy.''
  ``What the Congress has done and what the President will allocate 
will bring us back to a position of primacy,'' I mention that again, 
Madam Speaker, because, among the many conversations we have here about 
military readiness, General Mattis has expressed confidence that, in a 
time of war, the Congress would fund the military.
  In fact, in that same testimony that I quoted from earlier before the 
Armed Services Committee, he said: ``I know that in time of a major 
war, Congress will provide our military with what it needs. But money 
at the time of crisis fails to deter war. . . .''
  I know the Congress will provide what we need in a time of crisis, 
but money at a time of crisis fails to deter that crisis. We could have 
avoided that conflict had only we been properly funded.
  We came together with White House leadership. The President said: I 
need $700 billion for 2018; I need $716 billion for 2019. That is what 
General Mattis said as well. That is what we are hearing from the 
entire administration. That is what we came together and gave.
  But the era of fiscal conservatism, Madam Speaker, is not over. The 
era of shortchanging our military, in the hopes that we might come 
together on a bigger deal, the gridlock that was created by that, that 
gridlock is over. That uncertainty that General Mattis bemoaned, that 
is over. But fiscal conservatism continues.
  It is not just on the defense side. It is easy to talk about the 
defense side because I know that is something that unites everyone in 
the Chamber, Madam Speaker. But let's look at the nondefense side.
  Nondefense, as you know, Madam Speaker, is, well, everything else 
that the Federal Government does--it is not an income support program--
from parks to roads to courts, from prisons to education, from 
investments in NIH and the CDC, from our involvement overseas in hunger 
programs and refugee programs. Absolutely everything

[[Page H1209]]

else the Federal Government does is in the nondefense discretionary 
side.
  I point you to two lines, once again, Madam Speaker. The red line is 
what President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid 
anticipated spending before I arrived. The black line is what we have 
actually spent since I arrived.
  Among the many changes made in the law, when the President signed the 
caps deals into effect last week, is that we raised nondefense 
discretionary spending, too. In fact, over the 2-year deal that the 
President signed, we are talking about an additional $300 billion--
billion with a B--in additional spending.
  Well, by golly, Madam Speaker, if you care about budgets, if you care 
about deficits, isn't $300 billion a frighteningly large figure to 
increase spending in a time of already existing deficits? Of course, it 
is. Of course, it is.
  But let me say, once again, that does not mean the era of fiscal 
conservatism is over. We had a choice. We could continue to keep the 
military in that space of uncertainty that General Mattis cited as 
being so dangerous, or we could cut the deal that we had to cut to 
break that cycle of uncertainty.

  I don't know what kind of negotiating experience you have had, Madam 
Speaker, but it turns out that when you walk into a negotiation and 
say, ``I have got to have what I have got to have, and I will give you 
whatever you need in order to get it,'' you are not in a particularly 
strong negotiating spot.
  That is the position the President found himself in. He was 100 
percent committed to our troops, he was 100 percent committed to 
national security, he was 100 percent committed to that pay raise that 
we had promised our troops, but we had not funded, and he said: I am 
going to do whatever it takes to get $700 billion in 2018 and $716 
billion in 2019, to make sure national security is protected and our 
troops are served.
  Well, what that led to was an increase in nondefense discretionary 
spending as well, Madam Speaker. But still look at these lines. That 
delta between the top line of where we were going to go and the black 
line of where we have actually gone is trillions of dollars'--trillions 
with a T--worth of savings.
  Between the defense spending, Madam Speaker, which changed 
dramatically after that big freshman class in 2011 arrived, and 
nondefense spending, which changed dramatically after that big class in 
2011 arrived, trillions of dollars in debt has not occurred. Trillions 
of dollars in spending of American taxpayer dollars has not occurred.
  We have squeezed those budgets: the security budget and the 
nonsecurity budget, the defense budget and the nondefense budget. We 
have squeezed each of those budgets to make sure that we are getting a 
dollar's worth of value for the American taxpayer out of every dollar 
that we spend.
  The net result of that, Madam Speaker--that and a collection of 
economic outcomes that have been desirable--has led to a decrease in 
net interest spending: money that was not borrowed, interest that does 
not have to be paid--money that was not borrowed. Thus it didn't drive 
interest rates up. Those interest rates are lower on all the other 
money that has already been borrowed, not just trillions of dollars in 
savings on spending that was foregone, Madam Speaker, but trillions of 
dollars in savings of interest that was not paid.

                              {time}  1330

  Why do I take the time to come down to the floor to tell that story, 
Mr. Speaker?
  It is because I grow weary, as I know all of my colleagues do, of 
reading the defeatist headlines that show up on the paper day after day 
after day: Congress failing; gridlock prevailing; bipartisanship dead; 
cooperation extinct.
  It is not true.
  What we have done together is worth bragging about back home. What we 
have done together is worth celebrating when we are together. What we 
have done together is worth using as a model for thinking about what we 
can do together again tomorrow.
  It doesn't matter whether you sit on the furthest right in this 
Chamber or the furthest left in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. That dollar 
worth of taxes raised from that American citizen is a valuable thing. 
It is a trust. There is a stewardship obligation to each and every one 
of those dollars.
  What do you want to use it for?
  Maybe you want to give it back to those American citizens. I am 
particularly pleased with the tax bill we passed that did exactly that. 
Again, passed it in the House, passed it in the Senate, moved it to the 
White House; done in a bicameral way.
  I think the American citizen can generally spend their dollar better 
than we can spend it on their behalf. I know they trust themselves to 
spend their dollar more than they trust us to spend it on their behalf.
  We could take that dollar, we could put it back in an American 
citizen's pocket. Leave it with them to begin with and never even take 
it. That is what we did with the tax cuts.
  We could invest that dollar in national security. We could look to 
see what is that additional training an airman might need; what is that 
additional equipment that a marine might need; what is that additional 
item that we could research, purchase, improve, repair, that would make 
a difference in the life of a man or a woman who is serving this 
country.
  We could spend that dollar on national security. We could spend that 
dollar on nondefense needs; research in Alzheimer's; research at our 
major universities; research into that next generational transportation 
outcome that is going to change the way that we deal with congestion in 
America.
  There are 1,000 different ways to spend each and every one of those 
dollars. It does not matter where you believe that dollar ought to go. 
It is a worthwhile purchase to make sure we are using that dollar, 
either with the American citizen in their pocket, with the DOD in the 
pursuit of national security, or with one of our great research 
institutions in pursuit of the next healthcare discovery, rather than 
paying it in interest to someone around the globe who lent us money in 
our time of need.
  We need to restrain those dollars today, Mr. Speaker, so that when we 
have a time of need in the future, we will be able to access them. The 
era of fiscal responsibility is not behind us; it is upon us.
  We have an opportunity each and every day together to squeeze those 
dollars until they scream; squeeze the value out of every nickel that 
comes through this institution. We have done it together, Mr. Speaker.
  This isn't an aspirational goal. This is a certain fact, that we have 
done it together year after year after year after year. This isn't 
something that maybe one day, if only we work hard enough, we can do. 
This is something we have achieved year after year after year after 
year.
  Let's not stop. Let's not stop. And let's not let folks tell us that 
we can't get it done together. Let's not give in to that devil on the 
left shoulder that says we should go down and run each other out and 
talk about why the institution fails.
  Let's give in to that angel on the right shoulder that talks about 
how, if we put our minds together, if we commit ourselves to one 
another, there is genuinely no limit to what we can do together.
  I am not just talking about what we can do together as the body here 
in the United States House, Mr. Speaker. And I am not just talking 
about what we can do together as a House and a Senate and a White 
House. I am talking about what we can do together as the American 
people.
  The strength of this institution has never been the 435 Members who 
are in it. It has been the 300 million Americans who have sent us here. 
The strength of this institution has never come from the Members. It 
has come from the Nation that lends us its power.
  I genuinely believe there is no limit to what we can do together. I 
am genuinely disappointed in those days that we give in to that devil 
on the left shoulder that tells us that running each other out, running 
each other down, denigrating the institution, denigrating the Nation, 
denigrating one another is the pathway to success.
  But we have had enough victories together. We have come through 
enough challenges together. When they said we

[[Page H1210]]

would fail, we have succeeded together enough that I have great 
optimism not just about the next 10 months in this Chamber, but about 
the next decade, the next generation, the next hundred years for this 
country.
  We don't know when the economy is going to fail us, Mr. Speaker. We 
have to plan for that rainy day. We have been doing that. We have been 
doing it with spending at every single level in the government, and it 
has made the biggest difference in debt and deficits that I have seen 
in my lifetime.
  Let's build on that success. Let's recommit ourselves to that goal. 
Let's surprise the naysayers about the things that we do together.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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